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Empires of the Undergrowth
Asid:
November 2021 Newsletter
Fri, 26 November 2021
Covering updates and news from October to November 2021
Welcome to 2021’s last newsletter! We’ll get straight to the point about where we’re at with the fire ant release plans after this introduction. We’ve also got a very special extra level set to come out shortly before the holidays next month – so plenty of details on that. There’s a final creature we want to show off, some finished animations and game mechanics for a creature revealed a while back, and some finished artwork for the swamp environment in which the 4th tier will be set, as well as the first of our carnivorous plants.
Trap jaw ants on the march from Kacper on our Discord
4th Tier Release Plans
Those of you who have been following along on our social media and particularly our Discord will probably have gotten the impression over the last few months that we intended to get the fire ant update out before the end of the year. Indeed these were our plans, and obviously shortly before Christmas would have been the ideal time for that – but we’ve realised that we won’t be able to hit that goal.
As is always the case with game development and ambitious projects, pinning down how long things take is exceedingly tricky. What would appear to be an easy task ends up taking a long time, unexpected complications arise, and priorities change. We are confident enough at this point to say that the update will come in early 2022, but exactly how early is yet to be finalised
.
Our marketing team will be getting together soon to work on some promotional material, and a short while after this we will have a much better idea of when we’ll be able to give you a date for the long-awaited update. Expect some more firm news on this before the end of the year!
We can let you know that we’ve been working with the voice cast again recently, and it’s been great hearing new words from devious scientists and sombre narrators again. We took advantage of this fact to have the narrator record some extra voice lines for a new extra level. Which leads us on to:
Extra Level Coming Soon – Hibernation
Although we realised we wouldn’t be releasing the 4th tier this year, we still wanted to do something a little special to close out 2021. Many of the extra levels are rather fanciful, playing fast and footloose with reality and we get very silly scenarios such as Beetles Rise Up! Not so with Hibernation, which will play out much more like a campaign level and is based on a real-world scenario. In it you play as wood ants living high in alpine mountains – where winters are harsh and ants must adapt or die.
It will be arriving shortly before Christmas, and it’ll be the first extra level to have completely new narration and music. Liam has snuck plenty of Yuletide-themed tunes in the new music! Here’s a little preview of that.
To survive and compete against nearby colonies, your wood ants will have to gather not just food, but slow-decomposing vegetation as well. As vegetation is broken down, it releases heat in much the same way a compost heap does. Decaying pine needles will warm nearby creatures in the nest, staving off the harsh cold outside and allowing ants to remain active for longer.
It’s shaping up to be a really fantastic extra level, and combined with the winter-themed music it should feel suitably seasonal. The ultimate goal is to allow your colony to settle down for the winter, safe with its warm vegetation chambers gently giving off heat, and enter a state of torpor until the spring sun warms the colony again. It’s set to be released just in time for all your holiday ant action.
Eastern Newt
The last of the amphibians that will be in the 4th tier update is the eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens) – more specifically the juvenile version of it, known as the red eft. They are bright orange or red, and have toxic skin – any assailant wishing harm upon the newt will have to cope with the potent tetrodotoxin. In-game, this is likely to manifest as them reflecting back some of the damage they receive back at their attacker as venom-type damage.
They love damp, swampy conditions – and your fire ants have made their home nearby. They will be unimpeded by water, and will be able to swim across the surface to reach islands much more easily than the invertebrates.
Swamp Environment
Our small but skilled art team has been working away on the swamp environment for several months now, and we’re now at a point where we can show off some of the surface! Whilst underground is a teal-tinted world full of roots, slime moulds and other such growths, the surface is green with algae, mosses, leaves and carnivorous plants.
A ramped area in the swamp adorned with dead wood, moss, lichen and algae
This damp environment will have changing water levels and a variety of new resource types, such as seed-rich pinecones and nectar-like secretions from the carnivorous plants. A huge variety of creatures live here, making their homes in the unique ecological niches allowed. This includes creatures adapted to hide amongst the traps of the meat-eating flora, such as the green lynx spider.
A wide area with a nest in the background on level 4.1, titled “Cold Blood” (WIP)
We’re well into the decoration phase now, with our dedicated environment artist Dan flexing his painting muscles to give the two campaign levels of the fire ant tier their distinctive final look. The rest of the team have been waiting as patiently as the rest of you have to see the results, and we think they’re stunning.
Venus Flytrap
When one thinks about carnivorous plants, the Venus flytrap is what immediately springs to mind. Although there are many kinds of plant adaptations that can extract nutrition from animals, such as pitchers and sticky traps, the iconic, dramatically-spiked leaf traps of the Venus flytrap are the most famous.
Two flourishing flytraps
The trap heads themselves are adorned with tiny, barely-visible trigger hairs. If more than one of these hairs is touched in a short enough space of time, the hairs will trigger a relay of chemical and mechanical actions that close the trap, and the struggling of the doomed invertebrate only makes the trap hold on tighter. Eventually, the trap will seal, forming a kind of “stomach” in which to dissolve the prey. Inevitably the victim is broken down into a liquid by digestive enzymes which is then absorbed by the plant.
A closer view of the leaf traps themselves
Despite their name, flying insects make up a very small proportion of the plant’s diet – roughly a third of its prey items are ants. Plants that consume animals do so as an evolutionary adaptation to poor soil quality in their area, lacking in phosphorus and nitrogen.
A closeup of a single trap, showing the tiny trigger hairs
The in-game mechanics of the flytrap will involve them exuding a kind of sugary nectar-like food on the traps, which will likely look similar to the honeydew globules that aphids provide. There will be a percentage chance to trigger the traps, killing any ants currently on them. There will be a balancing act to collecting enough of the nectar to make it worthwhile whilst being able to respawn lost ants sustainably.
Materials Breakdown
Related to the environment work detailed above, Dan C was kind enough to provide me with a breakdown of a rocky material used in the fourth tier campaign levels. It shows the amount of detailed layers needed to make surfaces realistically react to light, from the base layer, to displacement mapping (adds runtime detail to geometry), to normal mapping, which is a computationally efficient way to add extra non-geometric detail.
Many layers go into making a realistic material
Red Velvet Ant In Action
We announced the red velvet ant (Dasymutilla occidentalis) a while back, but we thought it’d be nice to show some of its movement and in-game mechanics. This creature is in fact not an ant at all, but a kind of wingless wasp. The females crawl on the ground and amongst vegetation, their bright red striping a warning about their excruciating stinging capabilities. They are not colloquially called the “cow killer” for no reason!
At high health, she will use her jaws to bite assailants. Eventually, as she feels more threatened, she will enter a state of panic when her health is reduced below a threshold amount. Her movement will become much faster, and she will switch to using her sting – one of the most potent insect stings in existence. The sting will allow her to cut down fire ants much faster as she fights for her life.
She also has an extremely tough exoskeleton, allowing her to take a lot of damage whilst in this frenzied state. You’ll have to weigh up the cost of replacing the ants you will inevitably lose before engaging in a tussle with this notorious resident of the green swamp.
EGX 2021
Back in early October developer Liam, product marketing manager Dan and community manager Mike travelled down to London to go to our first live event in over two years – EGX 2021 at the ExCeL centre. Our main aim was to get back into the swing of things with live events, and of course to show off the game to new and old players alike!
The three stages of man – Dan P, Liam & Mike at our EGX booth
It was fantastic to be able to see people playing the game in person after so long (whilst frantically taking mental notes on what needs to be improved, I think we should warn people off freeplay somehow until they’ve played the campaign!) and it was wonderful to see people discovering it for the first time. We’re hoping to do more live events again going forward if the world allows it.
We exhibited alongside Paul Hervé, developer of Adapt
Screenshot Central
Every time I write a newsletter I look forward to this part. If you’d like to submit an Empires of the Undergrowth screenshot for consideration in a future newsletter (or the occasional community Screenshot Saturday on Twitter and Facebook) then by far the easiest way to do so is to join our Discord and post in the screenshot channel. To get some nice angles, remember to use photo mode – F9 by default. If you hold down shift whilst hitting F9, your camera will be unbound to the surface for added creativity.
An uber whip spider strikes in this shot from Frazzz (check out his YouTube!)
The truth revealed by Atta cephalotes Boi
An uber falls from HamAndCheeseSandwich
Year’s End
With our bimonthly newsletter cycle, that concludes the newsletters for 2021.
It’s been a challenging year for all of us, for very obvious reasons, and I said the exact same thing last year. In spite of that, we sincerely hope you’ve had reasons to be thankful and celebrate too. Our friends in the US have just had thanksgiving, and this seems like a good moment to try and remember what we’re thankful for. We here at Slug Disco are eternally grateful and thankful for the patience, support and kindness you’ve shown to us, as we continue to shape our vision for EotU and Slug Disco as a whole. We know things take time – but they’re worth the wait, and the wait is no longer so long. Look out for more news before the year’s end, and we’ll see you in 2022 to continue our journey into the Undergrowth.
Mike & the Slug Disco Team
Asid:
0.2331 Released - Controller Support, New Language Localisations
Tue, 1 March 2022
The main feature this time is full support for gamepads (Steam Deck, XBox One and PlayStation 4 controllers are all officially supported).
If you prefer to play with a gamepad or would like to try it out, now is the time! We are also adding six new languages localisations (we are not updating our store page to say we officially support these yet; they should be considered to be in beta for now). The languages are Czech, French, Japanese, Korean, Dutch & Polish.
There’s also some fixes and changes, detailed below, including a fix for Mac so Mac users should be able to play Hibernation now! We have also moved the game files to an encrypted form, so the download is likely to be larger than a regular patch since Steam won’t recognise the encrypted files.
Headline Features
• Gamepad support added
o All standard gamepad buttons now have functions which can be viewed from the options menu
o When using a gamepad, key bindings show gamepad glyphs
o Several notifications have been added or replaced to explain gamepad support when using them
o The Hungry Spider can now be properly controlled with a gamepad
o XBox One, PlayStation 4 and Steam Deck gamepads can be selected from the options menu to display the correct glyphs
o When using Big Picture mode on Steam, or the Steam Deck the on-screen keyboard will display when needed
• Several new localisation languages added for testing (Czech, French, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish)
Other Fixes & Changes
• Mac build is now updated to include the Hibernation extra level
• Fixed a memory leak in creature despawning
• Fixed some minor pathing bugs
• Several areas in the game with small text have had their text size increased
• Fixed an issue where the mouse pointer would not change until moved in some circumstances
• Fixed an issue where brood chamber hover information would come up overground after having it come up underground
• Fixed an issue where ants could get stuck on the overground nest exit
• Fixed an issue where sometimes level setups could drop off the screen at the bottom
• Minimap pings will now display more consistently
• Fixed an issue where dragging the mouse during a cutscene could cause tiles to tag for digging
• Fixed an issue where tiles would be left highlighted when tabbing to surface
• Fixed an issue where dead creatures could sometimes be carried off to the side of the carrying ant
• Fixed an issue where the mouse cursor would change when hovering over an enemy nest but not change back when moving off it
• Added in quick build / upgrade key binding (default to thumb mouse button 1). Hold to automatically select the upgrade or build tool most suitable for where your cursor is
Asid:
March 2022 Newsletter
Thu, 31 March 2022
A shorter-than-usual newsletter because we've run out of things we want to spoil
This will be a shorter-than-usual newsletter, just catching up with the last of the things we’ve posted on our social media before the fire ant update. We’re rounding the corner to the home stretch on that front now, and whilst we’re not quite ready to announce a date (that will come out of the blue one day with a trailer) we are at a point where we don’t want to spoil anything else, as we still want there to be plenty of surprises for when the update drops.
We’ll go over a few things that have been previously announced – all of the things shown in this newsletter are from the 4.x missions.
Environment Showcase
Our environments for the fire ant update are near complete, and we put together this short video to highlight some of the artwork by our dedicated environment artist, Dan C. Level 4.1 will be called “Cold Blood”, and this is the arena in which it is set. The swampland has poor soil so many of the plants here have evolved to be carnivorous.
Venus Flytrap in Action
One such carnivorous plant is the iconic Venus flytrap. The leaves are tipped with traps that exude nectar, attracting ants and flies. Trigger hairs on the inside of the trap cause it to snap shut when touched, effectively turning the traps into stomachs which then digest the prey. The flytrap will act as an “area denial” obstacle – ants will climb it but will inevitably trigger the traps, before re-opening after a cooldown.
Caterpillars & Sweetbay Magnolia
Caterpillars have recently hatched on this young sweetbay magnolia sapling. Such an infestation may well be fatal, but help is at hand – the resident fire ants are very glad of the extra protein. Caterpillar-spawning plants will provide a rich food source for your fire ants, as long as you can survive the competition required to keep the supply lines open.
Milkweed & Aphids
Milkweed plants are often homes to sap-sucking aphids. The aphids excrete a sweet substance called honeydew, which fire ants find irresistable. The ants will care for their aphid flocks, protecting them from predators, jealously guarding them from competing colonies and even moving them to safer locations.
A fire ant tending to aphids on a milkweed
A milkweed stripped of aphids
Screenshot Central
Let’s close out this shorter-than-usual newsletter with the traditional Screenshot Central post! The easiest way to get these to us is to post on the #screenshots channel of our Discord – I usually have a look through it once a week or so for great snaps for social media and the newsletters.
A whip spider glows in the moonlight from realpumadog
rmy ants have defeated an uber mole cricket in this shot from Anthony Gaming
A ladybird beetle flies off from SamThePro
Asid:
Fire Ant Update Coming 6 PM UK Time Today: 'How To Play', Launch Livestream
Tue, 26 July 2022
The fire ant update is dropping at 6pm UK time tomorrow! Also, some details about how to play as fire ants in a new vid.
Just a very short post to confirm that the launch of the fire ant update won't be occurring at midnight but at 6 pm UK time tomorrow
, or approximately 23 hours after this is posted. Converted to some other times this comes out as:
1 pm: US East Coast
10 am: US West Coast
7 pm: Most of Europe
3 am on the 28th: Most of Australia
A quick search engine query should let you convert your own local time from the team's 6pm BST (British Summer Time).
Today we posted a quick tutorial video that should help you quickly get up to speed with some of the major new mechanics introduced with this update. It doesn't spoil anything that hasn't already been revealed, but if you're trying to keep entirely unspoiled you'll probably want to skip this one.
Roughly an hour before we launch the game, some of the team are going to do a livestream on YouTube going over some of the new mechanics, changes, and other such things. A quick breather before we push the button! Join us over there:
YouTube™ Video: FIRE ANT LAUNCH STREAM!
Views: 0
We're launching the fire ants very shortly! Join us for a light-hearted breather before we push the button. =================================== Empires of the Undergrowth is a real-time strategy game...
Asid:
Fire Ant Update OUT NOW!!
Wed, 27 July 2022
It's finally here, and we can't be more grateful for your patience. We hope you enjoy it!
Here's a moment we've been waiting for as long as you have - we're burning with joy to be releasing the fire ant update to everyone! Let's keep this introduction short, because I'm certain you want to dive right into that lovely swamp as soon as you can. Here are the full patch notes for the update.
Patch Notes - The Fire Ant Update
The Fire Ants Invade!
Fire ants are nothing if not adaptable to new challenges. These swamplands that young queens, fresh from their nuptial flight, have landed in are not in their native range. The changing, often-flooded environment will test their flexibility to the limit.
• A whole new formicarium tier, featuring 2 new documentary scenarios:
o 4.1 Cold Blood: a newly-settled fire ant queen must deal with the threat of the amphibians & other denizens of the green swamp
o 4.2 A Bridge Too Far: use the fire ant’s abilities to traverse water and reach all the resources you can, whilst an ominous shadow looms overhead
• New focal ant species: fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) which come in two soldier variants:
o Pervasive fire ants will respawn for free after a while
o Vigorous fire ants will have a buff to their stats for a time after spawning
o The tiles of both variants can support 2 ants at a time at level 3
• Fire ants introduce several new ant skills:
o Bridge building: fire ants can build floating pontoons over water to reach resources previously unplundered, but beware of changing water levels!
o Aphid relocation: relocate yellow aphids from distant milkweed plants and bring them closer to home for a reliable source of honeydew, but other colonies may not like that!
o Titan climbing: very large new enemies can be climbed for extra damage!
• New auxiliary ant species:
o Big-headed ants (Pheidole morrisii) have an ancient genetic variant waiting to be awoken
o Little black ants (Monomorium minimum) use a chemical threat display called gaster flagging
• New swamp environment
• A menagerie of new swamp-dwelling critters with unique stats & abilities
• New voice acting from the narrator & scientists
• New music for our dynamic conductor system
Formicarium Challenge 4 Awaits!
Once you’ve completed the documentary scenarios and are back in the formicarium with your rewards, the fire ant soldiers will make a fine addition to your collection. Add them to your formicarium to help you with the challenges ahead! They have 4 formicarium upgrade options:
• Surefooted: gains extra attack damage when mounted on an enemy
• Evasive: gains a small chance to take no damage from a hit
• Last Stand: at zero health, will survive for a short time longer with reduced attack speed
• Last Laugh: upon death, the fire ant will deal high damage to its closest enemy if in range
After you’ve completed your upgrades and stocked up your resources, the scientist has an idea - and he’ll take the opportunity to put it into action. As always, Formicarium Challenge 4 will be a climactic test of your colony’s prowess and your own skills as a player, so be prepared.
Other Changes
• Buried creatures (! & ? icons underground) will now display on the minimap
• Additions to the minimap & more consistent minimap pings
• Woodworm & woodlice will now appear as food on the minimap
• Escape key will now close the in-game menu
• Made Formicarium Challenge 3 a little easier on Hard & Insane
• Holding Insert & PageUp keys now rotates the camera view 90° left & right respectively
• Added a quick build / upgrade tool which detects nearby tile type to use, thumb mouse button by default
• Delete tool can now be used on tiles where building has not yet started
• Added an entirely new set of icons for the Formica ereptor
adaptations menu
• Added a check for progress file corruption on game startup. If detected progress file is wiped and a new one made
• Added victory & defeat images for Beetle Rise Up! & the Hungry Spider levels
• Power-scaled creatures will have a star next to their health overlay displaying their scale level (currently only used in freeplay and some extra levels)
• Creatures will now correctly display the status effect they are currently experiencing
• Renamed worker "evasive" ability to "nimble" to avoid confusion with fire ants
• Formicarium level setup rewards on gateway levels now appear as zero before difficulty select
• Clicking an active underground minimap tab will now take you there from the surface
• The Promised Land demo level reinstated
• Moving buried creatures will now throb on the minimap
• Dead harvestable creatures in the Battle Arena will now not sink for 2 seconds
• Credits updated
Fixes & Optimisations
• Colony rehousing will now give the correct jelly amount for level 3 tiles (previously it was counting level 3 tiles as level 2)
• Fixed an issue where wood ants could get stuck in a deployment animation when a line-of-sight check was failing
• Huge improvement to render times for all 2D overlays (upgrades, health, food, etc)
• Numerous optimisations to swarming, pathfinding & movement
• Numerous optimisations to rendering for many individual assets
• Fixed an issue in Battle Arena where some ant levels weren’t working
• Fix for a rare pheromone marker crash
• Fixed a rounding error causing incorrect number of creatures to spawn in battle arena
• Fixed an issue where creatures dying mid-air had their food collection point far from their corpse
• Fixed an issue causing underground tile highlighting to stick on some tiles
• Connecting bridge in the interlocking formicariums will now load correctly
Localisation
• Updated, fixed and changed many interface & game narration lines in existing localisations
• Various menus & UI elements adjusted to allow for translations that were the wrong size for them
• Font changes for CJK languages
• Added 7 new officially-supported localisations. These are:
o Czech/ Čeština
o Spanish/ Español
o French/ Français
o Korean/ 한국어
o Japanese/ 日本語
o Dutch/ Nederlands
o Polish/ Polski
Known Issues
• Extra level Extremis is currently crashing on launch (caught this one too late to re-package the project in time; will be fixed for the next patch)
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